vinylinalphabetical-blog - Tumblr blog

[vinylinalphabetical-blog]

500. Yung Lean's 'Unknown Memory' (RIP Vinyl In Alphabetical)

I’ve struggled in the last month to figure out what I want to write here, because for the better part of the last 900 days, this blog has been a huge part of my life. I’ve written here through a lot of shit; failed relationships, new relationships, professional lows, professional highs, some sappy shit, some real shit, and up to today, when I’ve probably outgrown needing a blog about my record collection in order to write about my feelings.

This blog was never really just about listening to your records in alphabetical order, and if you read this you know that: it was about how music defines periods in our lives, how music can provide a buoy when shit is a storm, and how creating something when you’re drunk and at a personal low sometimes leads you to building a weird community around a blog where you write about your records. I started this blog at maybe the lowest point in my adult life, and I am about to leave it at what I hope is the start of the peak of it.

I want to thank everyone who ever read this Tumblr, and everyone who ever wrote for this Tumblr. I want to thank Erik Sateren for profiling this Tumblr, and Cameron Schaefer for being probably the most public booster of this thing. Thanks to Courtney for being the most prolific Reblogger in Vinyl in Alphabetical history. Thanks to Eric for being the person who technically invented this Tumblr when he turned my drunken weekend tweets into a Tumblr idea. I am forever in his debt, mostly because he’s my editor at Noisey now.

I am not quitting writing, obviously; I’m still writing for Noisey, and I’m still writing locally, and I have some new projects in 2015 I’m excited about (including a vinyl-centric thing I’m working on). I also started a Medium. I’m not familiar with the medium yet (lol) but I’m gonna blog there now @thestorfer.

I want to finish by thanking you for reading this. I know I thanked you in the third graf, but I want to say it again. I loved every minute of doing this insane thing. RIP. 

[vinylinalphabetical-blog]

499. V/A: Inside Llewyn Davis Soundtrack

15 Favorite Movies of 2014

This is a little late because it took me a while to see every Oscar contender because for some reason my local theaters got them much later than they usually do. I know 2014 was the year “music was weak” but how come no one is talking about how much films sucked in 2014? It was a really weak year, all told. Last year I had a hard time deciding what to cut to get to my top 20; this year I had to reach to get to 15. Nothing hit me as hard this year as Inside Llewyn Davis did last year either. Here’s my favorite 15 movies of 2014. 

15. Gone Girl: I saw this with my girlfriend, and I had no idea about the book or anything, and this shit wrecked me for a couple hours. The scene where she’s naked and cuts open Doogie Howser’s neck was the most terrifying thing in cinema in 2014.

14. Snowpiercer: Second best videogame of 2014.

13. Noah: I took my folks to this when it came out because my mom is down with weird historical-ish epics, and I ended up totally loving this movie. It was dark, it was weird, it was the best-case scenario of an auteur shaping a dumb premise (why make a Noah movie in 2014?) and making the best possible result.

12. Interstellar: Imagine this movie with the space bookcase taken out, and this would be best space movie of all time.

11. A Most Violent Year: This kept building and building and building and I assumed some really heinous shit was going to happen and then it pays off in unexpected ways. Jessica Chastain was incredible in this; I was worried she’d show up and boss me around and treat me like shit too. My man Oscar Issacs killed it too.

10. The Edge of Tomorrow: Best videogame of 2014. First movie that captured what it’s like to play videogames in a movie-form.

9. Inherent Vice: It was like being stoned right along with Joaquin Phoenix, and it’s shaggy, and I’m not sure it even made a lick of fucking sense but I loved it.

8. LEGO Movie: I was totally charmed by this, which seems insane, given that it’s a movie about LEGOs. But ultimately it ended up really being about imagination, and about dads and sons.  

7. Godzilla: Most underrated blockbuster of 2014, I’ve seen this 4 times and each time I appreciate it more. It’s giant monsters knocking over buildings, I mean, come on.

6. Guardians of the Galaxy: I am someone who didn’t kiss a girl till he was 22 and it was because he was too busy reading STAR WARS books, so you know why this is here.

5. Foxcatcher: Channing Tatum is the real best performance here, though there was a 5 minute span where I thought I was gonna watch Steve Carrell shoot a bunch of horses, which was terrifying. Made wrestling seem interesting and poetic; a huge feat.

4. Nightcrawler: Feel like this was this year’s most underrated movie: Gyllenhall was creepy, tone perfect, and this was a skin-crawling depiction of tabloid culture and news journalism. I was knocked out by this.

3. Rise of the Planet of the Apes: This is secretly the best franchise out right now, and if you disagree I’m gonna hurl poop at you like a damn dirty ape.

2. Boyhood: It’s like watching yourself grow up from 8-18, complete with all the awkwardness therein. Never felt more drained and wrecked after a movie this year than this one. 

1. Whiplash: It’s about art, it’s about perfection, it’s about teachers, it’s about lies, it’s about success, it’s about drums, it’s about jazz, it’s about JK Simmons as a neo-nazi, it’s about being pushed, and it’s about going for it. Best movie of 2014. 

[vinylinalphabetical-blog]

498. TV on the Radio's 'Seeds'

2014: A YEAR IN LISTS OF STUFF

THINGS THAT HAPPENED IN 2014 THAT WERE TIGHT: 

Started dating A, I bought a lot of records, I went to Country USA and liked it, I saw Outkast, I wrote a lot of stuff I’m proud of, I went to Pitchfork and cried on the way home because I was sad I had to leave because it was one of the best weekends of my life, I sang “International Players Anthem” about 400 times at karaoke, my birthday party where 40 people came to the karaoke bar, me and my sister kind of started having a semi-normal relationship which dovetailed with her moving home which was miraculous, falling in love with A, taking my dad to a music festival and him loving EDM more than I even liked it, I watched a lot of wrestling, I went to Philadelphia to visit Graham and loved it, I went to MoMA, I watched Wrestlemania XXX’s main event in the back of a bus drinking a beer with a stranger and flipped when Daniel Bryan won the strap, I got a tattoo, A has a cat and it turns out I sorta like cats?, I went to the U.P. on vacation again and it was as perfect as always, I ate a lot of pizza, quit drinking soda (again), I got to see my family a lot, my mom sorta seems healthy for the first time since 2006, I saw Riff Raff twice in a year’s time, and this year I realized I like country music. A lot.

A PROBABLY INCOMPLETE LIST OF EVERYONE FROM TWITTER I MET IRL IN 2014:

@andrew_j_martin @missmallibu @davidreyneke @staceylansing @irenejadic @smiggins12 @jeremypgordon @davidgrossman @sexualjumanji @ericsundy @gabrielherrera @susannahyoung @bruce_wang69 @sashahecht @jeremydlarson @marissagmuller @kylekramer @andy_oconnor @jamiesoncox @rennavate @dalatudalatu @ernestwilkins @fakeshoredrive @somanyshrimp @passionweiss @kaylamomo @Jessierocks @Traysaywhatt @eriksateren @jmaloney9 @andrewmackens @toridexter @nah_rez @nolloydering @eriksateren

THINGS THAT HAPPENED IN 2014 THAT WERE NOT TIGHT:

My resolution for 2K14 was “#posvibes2k14” so I am not going to dwell on the #negvibes2k14. All told, 2014 was basically the best year of my adult life, which is tight, since I said that last year.  

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO WROTE FOR THIS TUMBLR IN 2014 WHO WAS NOT ME I AM GRATEFUL TO HAVE GOOD E-FRIENDS:

The Top 127 Books I Read in 2014

1. Solomon Northrup’s 12 Years a Slave (Finished Jan 3)

2. Alice Munro’s Dear Life (Finished Jan 4)

3. Doris Kearns Goodwin’s The Bully Pulpit (Finished Jan 9)

4. David Kirby’s Death At SeaWorld (Finished Jan 12)

5. Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath (Finished Jan 13)

6. Dave Van Ronk & Elijah Wald’s Mayor of Macdougal Street (Finished Jan 16)

7. Deborah Blum’s The Poisoner’s Handbook (Finished Jan 19)

8. Henry Bushkin’s Johnny Carson (Finished Jan 20)

9. Dan Charnas’ The Big Payback (Finished Jan 25) (Second time reading)

10. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (Finished Jan 26) (Second time reading)

11. Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear (Finished Jan 31) (Second Time Reading)

12. Carl Wilson’s Let’s Talk About Love (Finished Feb 1) (Second Time Reading)

13. Allan Moore’s Aqualung (Finished Feb 3)

14. Don McLeese’s Kick out the Jams (Finished Feb 4)

15. Nick Tosches’ Hellfire (Finished Feb 4)

16. Jeff Weiss and Evan McGarvey’s 2Pac Vs. Biggie (Finished Feb 6)

17. Ellen Willis’ Out of the Vinyl Deeps (Finished Feb 8)

18. Randall Sullivan’s LAbyrinth (Finished Feb 10)

19. Ian McDonald’s Revolution in the Head (Finished Feb 12)

20. Nick Tosches’ The Devil and Sonny Liston (Finished Feb 14)(2nd Time Reading)

21. Larry Harris’ And Party Every Day (Finished Feb 22)

22. Susannah Gora’s You Couldn’t Ignore Me If You Tried (Finished Feb 23)

23. Bob Woodward’s Wired (Finished Feb 27)

24. Nick Tosches’ Country (Finished March 1)

25. Randall Sullivan’s Untouchable (Finished March 6)

26. Sarah Churchwell’s Careless People (Finished March 15)

27. Peter Blecha’s Sonic Boom (Finished March 16)

28. Mike Tyson’s Undisputed Truth (Finished March 22)

29. Theresa Payton’s Privacy In The Age Of Big Data (Finished March 23)

30. Chuck Klosterman’s IV (Finished March 24) (Fifth? Time reading)

31. John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead (Finished March 27) (Fourth time reading)

32. R. Kelly’s Soulacoaster (Finished April 7)

33. Gabriel Sherman’s The Loudest Voice in the Room (Finished April 8)

34. Chuck Klosterman’s Eating the Dinosaur (Finished April 10) (Fourth time reading)

35. Chuck Klosterman’s Fargo Rock City (Finished April 13) (Fifth? Time Reading)

36. Malcolm Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw (Finished April 15)

37. Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers (Finished April 18)

38. Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point (Finished April 20)

39. Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles (Finished April 20)

40. Jonah Keri’s Up Up And Away (Finished April 22)

41. Thomas Harris’ The Red Dragon (Finished April 24)

42. Phillip Crandall’s I Get Wet (Finished April 26)

43. Michael Lewis’ The Blind Side (Finished April 27)

44. David Hand’s The Improbability Principle (Finished April 28)

45. Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction (Finished May 4)

46. Mark Harris’ Five Came Back (Finished May 8)

47. Richard Whittingham’s Meat Market (Finished May 9)

48. Paul Smith and Robert Warrior’s Like a Hurricane (Finished May 12)

49. David Shoemaker’s The Squared Circle (Finished May 15) (Second Time Reading)

50. Robert Greenfield’s The Last Sultan (Finished May 19)

51. Dave Itzkoff’s Mad as Hell (Finished June 1)

52. Shaun Assael’s Sex, Lies, and Headlocks (Finished June 5)

53. Thomas Hackett’s Slaphappy (Finished June 9)

54. Darcy Frey’s The Last Shot (Finished June 14)

55. Christopher Leonard’s The Meat Racket (Finished June 17)

56. Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell’s The Disaster Artist (Finished June 19)

57. Gina Arnold’s Exile in Guyville (Finished June 20)

58. Zachary Lazar’s Evening’s Empire (Finished June 22)

59. Michael Hastings’ The Magazine (Finished June 27)

60. Dave Eggers’ The Circle (Finished June 28)

61. Mohja Kahf’s E-Mails From Scheherazad (Finished July 4)

62. Ira Glass’ New Kings of Non-Fiction (Finished July 10)

63. William Cohan’s Price of Silence (Finished July 13)

64. Dr. Carl Hart’s High Price (Finished July 13)

65. Mark Harris’ Pictures at a Revolution (Finished July 14)

66. Kirk Walker Graves’ My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (Finished July 15)

67. Jordan Ferguson’s Donuts (Finished July 15)

68. Dave Eggers’ Hologram for the King (Finished July 15)

69. Greg Klein’s King of New Orleans (Finished July 16)

70. Amanda Petrusich’s Don’t Sell at Any Price (Finished July 24)

71. David Shapiro’s You’re Not Much Use To Anyone (Finished July 26)

72. Marc Maron’s Attempting Normal (Finished July 27)

73. Paul Collins’ Duel With The Devil (Finished July 28)

74. Life Stories: Profiles from the New Yorker (Finished August 2)

75. Box Brown’s Andre The Giant (Finished August 2)

76. Julie Maroh’s Blue is the Warmest Color (Finished August 2)

77. David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster (Finished Aug 3)

78. Allison Hoover Bartlett’s The Man Who Loved Books Too Much (Finished Aug 4)

79. Kim Cooper’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (Finished Aug 8)

80. Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (Finished Aug 10) (Fifth time? Reading)

81. Gay Talese’s Gay Talese Reader (Finished Aug 12)

82. Lauren Redniss’ Radioactive (Finished Aug 13)

83. Ron Suskind’s Life Animated (Finished Aug 14)

84. Rick James’ Glow (Finished Aug 18)

85. Alex Niven’s Definitely Maybe (Finished Aug 20)

86. Michael Lewis’ Flash Boys (Finished Aug 22)

87. Susan Orelan’s The Orchid Thief (Finished Aug 27)

88. Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman (Finished Sept 7)

89. David Byrne’s How Music Works (Finished Sept 18)

90. D.X. Ferris’ Reign in Blood (Finished Sept 23)

91. Bob Proehl’s The Gilded Palace of Sin (Finished Sept 24)

92. Charles Fairchild’s The Grey Album (Finished Sept 29)

93. Daphne Brooks’ Grace (Finished Sept 30)

94. Simon Kuper’s Soccernomics (Finished Oct 3)

95. Susan Fast’s Dangerous (Finished Oct 6)

96. Marja Mills’ The Mockingbird Next Door (Finished Oct 12)

97. George Jones’ I Lived To Tell It All (Finished Oct 14)

98. Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Beautiful Struggle (Finished Oct 19)

99. John Green’s The Fault In Our Stars (Finished Oct 20)

100. Drew Magary’s Someone Could Get Hurt (Finished Oct 20)

101. Mindy Kaling’s Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (Finished Oct 22)

102. Tina Fey’s Bossypants (Finished Oct 22)

103. Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist (Finished Oct 27)

104. Matt Bai’s All The News Is Out (Finished Oct 31)

105. Rachel Dratch’s A Girl Walks Into A Bar (Finished Nov 2)

106. Kevin Birmingham’s The Most Dangerous Book (Finished Nov 9)

107. Greil Marcus’ The History Of Rock And Roll in 10 Songs (Finished Nov 13)

108. Jeff Hobbs’ The Short At Tragic Life of Robert Peace (Finished Nov 21)

109. Malala Yousafzai’s I Am Malala (Finished Nov 23)

110. Jill Lepore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman (Finished Nov 27)

111. Rick Bragg’s Jerry Lee Lewis (Finished Nov 28)

112. Lawrence Schiller’s Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (Finished Nov 30)

113. Jules Feiffer’s Kill My Mother (Finished Dec 1)

114. John Marciano’s Whatever Happened to the Metric System? (Finished Dec 4)

115. Lena Dunham’s Not That Kind Of Girl (Finished Dec 6)

116. Amy Poehler’s Yes Please (Finished Dec 7)

117. John Darnielle’s Wolf In White Van (Finished Dec 11)

118. Michel Faber’s The Book Of Strange New Things (Finished Dec. 16)

119. John Branch’s Boy on Ice (Finished Dec 20)

120. Sarah Silverman’s The Bedwetter (Finished Dec 21)

121. Ian Bell’s Once Upon a Time: The Lives of Bob Dylan (Finished Dec 25)

122. Mark Titus’ Don’t Put Me In Coach (Finished Dec 26)

123. Chris Ott’s Shallow Rewards (Finished Dec 27)

124. Gail Buckland’s Who Shot Rock & Roll (Finished Dec 29)

125. Ellen Willis’ The Essential Ellen Willis (Finished Dec 30)

126. Eric Weisbard’s Top 40 Democracy (Finished Dec 31)

127. Walter Kirn’s Blood Will Out (Finished Jan 1) 

GOALS FOR 2015:

1. Keep writing things I am proud of. Do not write bullshit I am not interested in.

2. Work on relationship with A, because she’s the best thing that happened to me in 2K14.

3. Buy a dog.

4. #posvibes2k15

5. Get a new job. 

[vinylinalphabetical-blog]

497. Riff Raff's 'NEON iCON' (Top 50 Albums of 2014)

I don't know if I really need to set this up beyond saying I thought 2014 had a lot of dope music and here are my favorite 50 albums of 2014. I am surprised as you are that there is as much country on here as there is. 2 years ago Drew said my lists are "half batshit crazy half normal" and I strive for that always. 

50. Bobby Shmurda: Shmurda She Wrote EP

49. Migos: Rich Nigga Timeline

48. Wild Beasts: Present Tense

47. Nick Jonas: Nick Jonas

46. Death From Above 1979: The Physical World

45. Chromeo: White Women

44. Lakutis: 3 Seashells

43. Spoon: They Want My Soul

42. Prince: Art Official Age

41. Pharrell: G I R L

40. ASAP Ferg: Ferg Forever

39. Tory Lanez: Chixtape 2

38. Julian Casablancas + The Voidz: Tyranny

37. FKA Twigs: LP1

36. Blake Shelton: Bringing Back The Sunshine

35. Angaleena Presley: American Middle Class

34. Ghostface Killah: 36 Seasons

33. Vince Staples: Hell Can Wait

32. Big Freedia: Just Be Free

31. Sturgill Simpson: Metamodern Sounds in Country Music

30. Run The Jewels: Run The Jewels 2

29. YG: My Krazy Life

28. Azealia Banks: Broke With Expensive Taste

27. Brantley Gilbert: Just As I Am

26. Golden Donna: II

25. Freddie Gibbs & Madlib: Piñata

24. Dierks Bentley: Riser

23. Jeremih & Shlomo: No More

22. St. Vincent: St. Vincent

21. Perfume Genius: Too Bright

20. Zola Jesus: Taiga

19. Shabazz Palaces: Lese Majesty

18. 100s: IVRY

17. 5 Seconds of Summer: 5 Seconds of Summer

16. Charli XCX: Sucker

15. Rich Gang: The Tour, Part 1

14. Future: Honest

13. Migos: No Label II

12. Kool A.D.: Word O.K.

11. Taylor Swift: 1989

10. Yung Lean: Unknown Memory

9. Miranda Lambert: Platinum

8. TV on the Radio: Seeds

7. Spooky Black: Black Silk

6. iLoveMakkonen: IloveMakkonenEP

5. Eric Church: The Outsiders

4. Florida Georgia Line: Anything Goes

3. Future Islands: Singles

2. Sam Hunt: Montevallo

1. Riff Raff: Neon Icon

[vinylinalphabetical-blog]

Ayo dis me

LOOK MEME, I’M FAMEMEOUS: THE YEAR THE MUSIC INTERNET LEFT BLOGS BEHIND

Screw an album review.

[vinylinalphabetical-blog]

496. Run The Jewels' 'Run The Jewels II'

The 10 Best Concerts I Saw In 2014 (And The Worst One)

10. Dillon Francis, Revelry, May 3: I took my dad to see EDM gawd Dillon Francis this year, and it was mostly to turn my dad into a joke machine and it turned out he loved Dillon Francis.

9. Sugar Ray, Waterfest, July 17: I wrote about this one too, and even though the piece was sorta negative, I really liked Sugar Ray’s set. And Mark McGrath Tweeted me after, so, like, great success.

8. Ludacris, Summerfest, July 2: I can’t really tell you what happened or what songs Ludacris did at this concert, but I do know that it was me and A’s first date, and whatever happened at that concert pales in comparison. If you are trying to gauge someone’s viability as a romantic partner, take them to a Ludacris concert. Shit works. 

7. Thomas Rhett, Country USA, June 27: There’s a rare feeling you get when you realize you are seeing a “Next Big Thing” and I had that when I was seeing Thomas Rhett at Country USA. I wrote about it for Noisey, too.

6. Dave Chappelle, Orpheum Theater, Oct. 24: This isn’t a music concert obviously, but this was the hardest I laughed in 2014, and that counts for something. It was shocking how funny Chappelle could still be; he’s one of the greats. 

5. Run The Jewels, Lincoln Theatre/Majestic Theater, Jan 1/Nov 21: I saw Run The Jewels twice this year: Once in November in Madison, and once on New Year’s Eve in Raleigh, North Carolina. Both times it was like watching two Godzillas wrecking many cities at once. I think I like them more as a live experience than on wax, even. 

4. Kacey Musgraves, Barrymore Theater, Feb 8: Like Thomas Rhett, this felt like watching a mega star before they become a mega star. I wrote about this one, and it was weird to have it tie in to number 2.  

3. Florida Georgia Line, Country USA, June 27: The best band in country delivering what already feels like a greatest hits set, shit ruled.

2. Neutral Milk Hotel, Pitchfork Festival, July 19: I was surprised as shit, after the Kacey Musgraves article where I skipped a Neutral Milk Hotel concert to see her, to FEEL this concert as much as I did. I was in the second row and got moshed by people when “Holland, 1945” kicked in, and felt like crying multiple times. Shit was great.

1. Outkast, Summerfest, June 29: I wrote about this too—this post sorta turned into a linkdump, but whatever—and I said no concert I would see in 2014 would step to it. I was right. 

The Worst Concert I Saw In 2014 (And Maybe Ever)

Pizza Underground, High Noon Saloon, Nov 30: Who would have thought that Macaulay Culkin’s band that re-writes Velvet Underground songs to be about pizza would be such a fucking disaster? The joke gets bad 3 minutes into their set, and they perform for 40 minutes. This is a band that proves White Privilege exists, and is nefarious.

However, it was still a fucking crazy experience. I found out I was a foot taller than Macaulay Culkin when he bumped into me trying to get onstage.

[vinylinalphabetical-blog]

495. Craig Mack's 'Flava In Ya Ear' 12-inch

1. Imagine being Craig Mack. The entire publicity and machine behind the nascent Bad Boy label is behind you. You are going to be the biggest star in hip-hop. Your song, "Flava In Ya Ear," is a huge hit and all signs point towards you being the next big thing. Then this kid on your label--Notorious BIG--comes along, appears on the remix to your big hit, and from then on, you're six feet under, more or less. You're no longer number one on your label, you're nowhere, your sophomore album bricks and you disappear off the face of the earth. Your wikipedia ends in 1997. 

Somedays I hope to be a Notorious BIG. But most days I suspect I am destined to be a Craig Mack.

2. Greatest hip-hop video of all time, and it's not even close. 

3. Greatest homage music video of all time. And it's not even close.

4. It's the winter of early 2014, and I am driving two of the kids who work for me to our scheduling meeting and "Flava In Ya Ear" comes on the radio. "This song rules," I say. They both look at me, and go "Who the hell is this?" And I say Craig Mack. They look at each other. "Who?" 

[vinylinalphabetical-blog]

493 & 494. Billy Squier's 'Don't Say No' and Van Halen's 'Van Halen II'

When I think back on the narrative arc of this Tumblr, how I listened to my records in alphabetical order to try to prove something about myself, I guess, one of the unforeseen outcomes is that it's led me to reevaluate my relationship with a lot of the music I affectionately call "butt rock" and which had an undo influence on my life up to age 19-20. I've spent most of the last decade of my life pretending like I didn't do air guitar to Van Halen and Billy Squier songs in my bedroom at age 14, like I didn't know all the words to "Dance the Night Away," like my whole life I've been a cultured aesthete with #feelings about #important #music. So it's been good for me to have an excuse to knock down the facade through this project. Fuck pretending like Billy Squier is somehow less important than Joy Division. Fuck pretending like Van Halen weren't the best band of the '80s. Fuck pretending like "The Stroke" isn't a rad song. Enough's enough. 

[vinylinalphabetical-blog]

492. AC/DC's 'Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap'

1. Reason number 4,655,706 I am glad that I don’t music blog anymore: earlier this month, Phil Rudd, longtime drummer for AC/DC—it’s his breaks that power Back in Black—was arrested in New Zealand for allegedly trying to hire a hitman to kill…someone, because in New Zealand they don’t immediately release that information. He was also arrested for having weed and meth on him. When the news broke, many, many blogs rolled with a play on the “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” motif, which, OK, I get, but at the same time, what if Phil Rudd had actually had someone killed? Like, we’d be making a RIGHT THERE pun on a classic album for the sake of Twitter LOLZ when someone was murdered. It’s fucked up. Maybe it’s because I’m “getting older” but that kind of shit is starting to rankle me more and more. Go for laughs if you must, but I mean, come on; it’s too easy of a joke and someone could have died. 

2. The Rudd news also overshadowed the biggest news from camp AC/DC this year: founding member Malcolm Young had to quit the band because he has dementia. Has that ever happened before? Has any classic rock musician had to quit their band because of dementia, or Alzheimer’s before? That’s a crazy story, right? And how come only PEOPLE is really writing about it?

3. The AC/DC news’ major affect on me wasn’t that I was just indignant about shitty headlines or dementia; it’s that this news has led me to find out that the members of AC/DC are all only a year or two older than my parents. For all intents and purposes, my dad could have been Angus Young. I always think of my parents as being much younger than bands like AC/DC, the Beatles, and on and on. But really, they’re basically part of the same age bracket. So when I found out Malcolm Young is 18 months older than my dad, and that he’d have to quit his job because of dementia, I started thinking about my dad, and how at any moment I could be getting a call from a hospital saying he’s been admitted with dementia, or something worse. It made me start thinking about my parents dying. It’s been a weird couple weeks.

4. I was always one of those kids that was paranoid his parents were going to die on him. I worried my folks’ errand run hadn’t run a bit longer than they thought because of traffic, but instead that they had died in a fiery van crash. I imagined them being murdered, I imagined them dying in plane crashes when they went on a trip, I imagined them being robbed in our house when they didn’t pick up the phone right away. I worried that their choice for out guardians post their death—my Uncle Steve and my Aunt Robin—wouldn’t be satisfactory, and that my sister and I would be split up. I covered everything in my existential 10-year-old worrying. Watching too much Unsolved Mysteries had a lot to do with this.

It all felt like a run up to 2006, when my mom had a severe heart attack during a chemical stress test—she had one earlier in the year, and basically walked it off without knowing it—and had to have a 12 hour long open heart surgery. I’ve never vocalized this to anyone, but you know that feeling you get when you’re 100% sure something is going to happen and then it’s weird when it does? I was 100% sure my mom was going to die. I cried in the hospital bathroom, and steeled myself up for the idea that the woman who raised me, and who was one of my favorite people on Earth, would die. And then she didn’t. The surgery went fine. And I’ve felt like an asshole ever since. I learned to never bet against my mom.

5. Then three months later my mom was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, which they found during the heart surgery. It was before going in for thyroid removal surgery that my dad and her sat me down to do what they’d never done before: they wrote up a will, and told me everything about how they’d like things to go as they go into old age and die. They knew that I was the only one they could trust—my sister would be too hysterical to even have the will conversation, nonetheless execute it—so now I know tons of stuff about how my dad wants to be put in a home at the first signs of dementia—as an OT who worked in a nursing home before grad school he knows how bad it can get—and how they both want to have their funerals handled. It was heavy shit for a 20-year-old to deal with. 

The unintended consequence of this is that both my sister and I now joke constantly when we’re both at home about which things of my parents’ we’ll be getting in that will. My sister has laid claim to like 90% of my parents’ personal belongings, to the point where we joke she should just start putting her sticker on things. My parents get in on it too; my mom is giving me the armchair from the living room at Thanksgiving because she got a new one, and she said, “I know it’s yours in the will because your sticker is on it.”

I didn’t realize how macabre this was until I tried explaining it to A with my folks and you could tell from her general looks that it wasn’t something normal for a family to be doing at lunch.

The weird part is that knowing the will, joking about it, all that stuff is like a mainstreaming of my worry about my parents dying. It’s not just me as a 10-year-old worrying what would happen if they died; now the whole family has a plan and is joking about said plan. It’s made me comfortable with the idea that my folks will one day die; but I think about the practical stuff now when I worry about it.

But that comfort went away when I started thinking about how my folks are as old as AC/DC. That stuff could happen any day. I can’t wait to hug my mom and dad. 

[vinylinalphabetical-blog]

491. Dolly Parton's 'Just Because I'm A Woman' (Written By Susannah Young)

Hey y'all: I have another guest post on the blog today. Since I'm looking at wrapping this up at post 500, I wanted to take the opportunity to further one of this blog's stated missions: publishing the music writing of Susannah Young. Susannah used to write about music for Pitchfork, Under the Radar, and the blog we met each other at. But now her career as a hotshot corporate writer limits her in this endeavor, and I'm not being biased when I say she's one of my favorite writers to read on any piece of music. So, for the third time, I asked Susannah to write about a record. Apart from me, she's the most prolific writer this blog has known. Here she is on Dolly Parton:

Gentle readers, forgive me in advance: this is supposed to be an essay about Dolly Parton -- and more specifically, about Dolly Parton’s Just Because I’m A Woman -- but I can't talk about Dolly Parton without also talking about my shifting, complicated relationship with country music.

As an imperious, know-it-all butterball of a tween, I remember telling my aunt -- who was just trying to bring me into her love for Brooks & Dunn’s “Boot Scootin’ Boogie -- that I “don’t care for country music” and “I don’t listen to it because it doesn’t talk about things that are important or important to me.” UGH, right?

Several years later -- still an imperious, know-it-all butterball but now a full-fledged teen -- I was still publicly making fun of my cousins for always wanting to dance to Reba McEntire’s Unlimited and Dolly Parton’s My Tennessee Mountain Home at my grandma’s house, and rolling my eyes at every twang and “dang” spilling out of car windows and backyards and repair shops into the still, humid air. But all the while, seduced by some genetic secret, I was covertly renting collections of traditional Appalachian music from the local library, soaking in every hiss and pop, weaving my own thoughts into the ghosts of the land and the past crackling out of the speakers.

Fast-forward to college, and Ryan Adams’ music is fully taking up 1/5th of my heart, and posters with his face, 1/8th of my dorm room wall. Present day, I probably listen to Unlimited and My Tennessee Mountain Home more often than anyone else in my family and have played the role of Miranda Lambert apologist more than once at local bars. Irrespective of how I felt about it, country music has always shaped my identity.

And identity is everything to Southerners -- for two reasons:

1) People who have everything and people who have nothing (those two income brackets combine cover just about everyone in the South) are the people who are most invested in their relationship to the place they’re from and the places where their people came from; and

2) More than just about any other region of the United States, the Southeast is, for terrible reasons, a nexus of cultural intersection where this blending produced fascinating music, food and accents whose origins beg to be teased out and traced.

I am from the South, through and through. My dad’s family were subsistence farmers in North Mississippi. My mom’s dad grew up in a rowhouse in DC, her mom’s family hailed from the mountains of western North Carolina. You had to drive up the mountains in a stream to get to their place because at a certain point, developers admitted that nature did a better job building roads into remote hollers than they ever could.

I’ve never been embarrassed of being from Appalachia and being so thoroughly of the South -- but I can’t say I wore it like a badge of pride growing up. Dismissing country music was a way of distancing myself from the place where I grew up, the place where my people came from. It was me, knowing deep down that I wanted to choose a different life; that I wanted to live in a big city; that I wanted to place my trust in other people who were different from me, not in God and my country and my truck; that poverty was a thing to work together and defeat -- not a thing to be silently endured, then romanticized in ways other people could profit from.

In aggregate, country music tells the story of poor folks, a marginalized population that’s been through some tough shit -- but so many of those stories get the rose-colored glasses treatment, the “we didn’t have much, but we had each other” treatment. Not that that’s not a valid way to cope with a tough situation, or that you shouldn’t find things to be grateful for no matter what your situation is -- but it can be a dangerous mode of thought, as it tends to neuter the notion of fighting back or taking down the forces that pushed you into this situation in the first place. In other words, the danger of romanticizing the ways you cope with poverty is that it breeds a certain measure of apathy about ending poverty. The part of me that’s always furious about things like this always thinks FOR GOD’S SAKE, DON’T ACCEPT AND ROMANTICIZE; RISE UP AND FIGHT BACK. But when I *actually* started listening to country music, I realized that a lot of it does that -- and sometimes in sneaky, underhanded ways.

Enter Dolly Parton. She’s as guilty as any country musician when it comes romanticizing poverty (see: “Coat of Many Colors,” even as much as I love that song). She came from nothing and ended up with, arguably, everything: from one of twelve kids living in a house with no running water or electricity, to an international star on the merits of her own talent...talent that, regrettably, often gets overshadowed by fake boobs, teased wigs, thick makeup. But Dolly -- like many other country musicians -- often uses country music as a way to introduce some challenging ideas to skeptical folks, in the same way you’d wrap a pill in a piece of ham to get your dog to eat it. Because of country music’s perceived inoffensiveness (read: whiteness), it’s the perfect safe haven for artists to express unpopular (and yes, sometimes even progressive) ideas in ways that get people to buy into them, without fully realizing the full scope of what they’re buying into. Even before the Dixie Chicks outed themselves as politically progressive feminists, they were singing things like “I opened my mouth/ And I heard myself.” It made my friends and I feel more comfortable with being “out” about liking country music -- but my conservative family and others throughout the Bible Belt were also singing along to those same songs, songs about women leaving men for bigger dreams and broader goals, getting the fuck out of small-minded small towns. They were getting smacked in the face with entry-level feminism without even realizing it -- all because it was set to fiddles and banjos.

Therein lies the genius of Dolly Parton. She frames empowerment, agency and equality in completely concrete ways. She doesn’t talk about feminism conceptually, which can be a hard sell to people who don’t already buy it. She talks about feminism in the context of how you’d act in real-life situations in the name of self-preservation and self-esteem.

And Just Because I’m A Woman is a case study in taking that approach to feminism. Every song on the album centers on women moving through the world on their own terms, and positioning themselves to make their own choices about the course of their lives. The title track unsubtly skewers the double standard that exists regarding men taking multiple sexual partners versus women taking multiple sexual partners. “The Bridge” finds a woman applying an Awakening-style solution to her unplanned, unwanted pregnancy.

Even “I’ll Oilwells Love You,” a song about gold-digging, has a whiff of empowerment: she’s playing your boy like a fiddle, using the patriarchy to her advantage to make herself comfortable and secure. And even on “False Eyelashes,” where she’s lamenting the way performing shaped her life and stripped its happiness and meaning away, she acknowledges that it’s her own choices that got her into this situation -- and only her own choices can get her out of it.

This is an album about agency, wrapped up in talk of men, of diamonds, of pretty dresses and wide eyes. It’s important. It’s subversive. It’s important because it’s subversive.

***

It’s worth noting that Andrew and I leveled up from writing colleagues at a shitty music blog to Full-Blown Internet Friends based on some tweet I tweeted so very long ago that went something like “When you say you like everything except country and rap, I hear ‘I only like songs about fake problems.’” Country and rap are almost all I listen to anymore. I discovered I loved music by listening to young white men sing about the Young White Male Experience, and while there’s some overlap there (though I am a woman, I’m tall and have blonde hair and blue eyes; that’s that privilege swag), that’s really not my frame of reference. That’s not MY narrative.

Nothing’s brought alternate perspectives and untold stories to the forefront the same way the internet has -- and it’s no coincidence that as that’s happened, outlets for music criticism have broadened the scope of what they’re willing to cover, genre- and artist-wise, country artists cross over into pop, and shows like Nashville get made, aired on network television and become moderately popular. It doesn’t necessarily mean country music is commanding more respect at the macro level, but at least more people are paying attention.

And I feel (mostly) good about that. Seeing your narrative play out on the big stage invites it to get corrupted and co-opted and denigrated and misinterpreted -- but having that kind of exposure does, on some level, validate it. It says this experience, this frame of reference matters, that it’s worth sharing. And the more insight any of us has into alternate points of view, the more tolerant we become. You can only fully hate something if you’re completely ignorant about it. Knowledge breeds nuanced opinions and promotes openness. Fittingly, over the years, I’ve seen a lot of folks reverse their stance on Dolly Parton as they learn more about her and hear more of her songs. They no longer see her as the butt of a joke, a composite of tits and plastic surgery and rhinestones and hairspray; they see her for who she is: a talented and insightful songwriting powerhouse, a powerful and creative entrepreneur, an advocate for the poor, a feminist, an icon for gay men.

This “knowledge-->appreciation” journey is the exact trajectory of my relationship with country music. Growing up, I thought I should hate country music because I am a progressive, open-minded person. As I became more secure in myself and my relationship to the place I come from, I realized that even though so many country artists preach a lot of narrow-minded bullshit, liking most country music has actually made me a more open-minded person. I’m more quick to stick up for the value of narratives and art that people are quick to dismiss as pedestrian, uncomplicated, hokey, dumb or cheesy. And my growing acceptance of country music went hand-in-hand with a more positive opinion of the place where I’m from. I’m a kinder judge of my roots, of my hometown. I’ve got country music to thank for this opened mind -- and I’ve got Dolly to thank for helping open my mind to country music.

I hope that as long as there are people grappling with the good and bad sides of their identity and the twinned awesomeness and awfulness of their homes, that there are kind, perfectly manicured hands to gently usher them toward a new way of thinking about themselves and where they’re from. Thank you for doing that for me, Dolly.

Susannah Young has been to Dollywood. She's on Twitter.--@susannahyoung

[vinylinalphabetical-blog]

490. Billy Joel's 'Glass Houses' (Written By Caitlin White)

Hey y'all: I have a guest on Vinyl in Alphabetical again. Today, you can read my friend Caitlin White go long on falling in love with Billy Joel, loneliness, GLASS HOUSES, and...well, I'll just let her tell it. 

I was right on the cusp between middle school and high school when I first got into Billy Joel. it had been a few years since I entered public school, but I still deeply felt the effects of my homeschooling years. I'm 26, but entering a crowded room alone still terrifies me. When I meet someone new I'm sure they still see the outsider, outcast, weird girl that I still see myself to be. I still feel myself entering sixth grade orientation in my older brother's oversized t-shirt--thinking it was cool because to me, he was—trying to cover up a body I wasn't sure what to do with. I realized my mistake with a horrifying speed, but it was too late. Immediately then, I loved Billy Joel. He raged against the easy blindness of the rich and well-adjusted, he poked and prodded at social norms and the class system, wrapping it all up in a howl and a piano solo. He sang about rock and roll, New York City and love, all things I really wanted to experience. But most of all, he sang about loneliness. This was a language I knew innately; it was where I lived.

I bought Glass Houses at a vintage store in my town called St. Vincent de Paul. It's affiliated with a religious charity, so all the money goes back into the community, but really I went there because they had the best stuff. One of the more in-the-know indie/hip girls in freshman English had taken pity on me and introduced me to the easy freedom of second-hand vintage clothes. I didn't have even close enough of a grasp on economics back then to be anti-capitalist, but even at 14, I knew the rows of fresh stacked jeans at American Eagle that were about 7 times my allowance felt unfair, rote and oppressing. I wanted to fit in, but I also hated the people who wore these jeans. Second-hand clothing from the past let me determine my own destiny, my own style. But the store also had a record section, and as the daughter of a near-obsessive vinyl collector, I was always drawn to buy records--even though I wasn't really allowed to use our record player. But I loved Billy Joel and hadn't heard this one yet, so I bought it for $2 and imagined myself casually playing it for friends in college on my own player, effortlessly cool with my vaults of musical knowledge. Then, I went home and downloaded the record via Napster so I could actually hear it.

If there's ever been an album about loneliness, it's Glass Houses. But not in the traditional, sad strummed guitar sorry for yourself manner we've come to expect. It was the cusp of the '80s and the fat bloat of the Reagan years had yet to set in. The aggression and tumult of the '60s and '70s is thick on Joel's voice and heavy on his mind. You can tell he feels something slipping away, even in 1980. You can tell he feels angry about something that hasn't even happened yet. And you can hear his loneliness, blunt and thick like the voice behind the curtain of his quick-smile performer mentality. But Joel turned his loneliness into something powerful, the rock he hurled back at society's see-through, breakable structure.

Hurtling through "You May Be Right," "Sometimes A Fantasy," "Don't Ask Me Why" and "It's Still Rock and Roll To Me" is a clipped rage that sees individual failure with the same cool detachment as the cracks in the class system as a whole. The first four tracks are also littered with sound effects, the sound of broken glass and dialed numbers thrust you into Joel's reality in a way even the music can't. The softly tapped shakers on "Don't Ask Me Why" bring the clueless, spoiled socialite into perfect focus, the menacing guitar line on "It's Still Rock and Roll To Me" sums up the frustration of faux-cool and coming-of-age with an ennui that I think has still never been topped.

Working-class, frustrated and lonely, I became obsessed with Glass Houses as a conduit for all my disgust with the hypocrisy and horrifying habit of my small hometown. It wasn't until later in life that I began to unpack the implications of the album's next four songs: the obsessive drive behind "All For Leyna" made sense to my crush-ridden existence, but lonely as I was, it wasn't until college that the desperation of "Sleeping With The Television On" hit me after my second serious boyfriend said goodbye for good. It wasn't until I revisited the album to write this piece that the piercing despair of "I Don't Want To Be Alone" finally sank in—to overlook all the failings and bullshit in someone not out of love, but sheer desolation. And then I realized what had fueled most of my previous loves—fear of isolation, which has bloomed anyway. The mere presence of someone else doesn't actually save you, a fact that Billy nudges the listener toward in that song's weary narrative. Loneliness isn't necessarily determined or deferred by the presence of someone else.

The album ends with a somewhat out-of-place, sweeping lullaby called "Through The Long Night." It's a comforting cradle-rock of a closer on which Joel croons "no, I didn't start it / you're broken-hearted from a long, long time ago," before reassuring that even so, he'll be there, wading through the night terrors alongside you. It's a sweet, poignant moment that will probably feel recognizable to those who are more familiar with Joel's ballads. I'd like to say that I spent a lot of time with this song as well, seeking comfort and letting Billy substitute for whatever I felt to be missing during those years, filling whatever made me feel empty in those long drawn-out nights. But that's not true. I almost always skipped that song because I thought it was boring and went back to "You May Be Right." Actually, I went back to "You May Be Right" a lot of times when I listened to this record. Sometimes when the album was almost over, sometimes halfway through, sometimes I'd just leave that first track on repeat for hours, foolishly grinning every time the shattering glass sample kicked it back off again--like it symbolized my own rebellious act.

"You may be right, I may be crazy," Joel would howl, feverishly delighted with his own brazen candor, and then drop the punch line: "But it just might be a lunatic you're looking for...."

Call me crazy—that's the first line that ever made me feel like I belonged somewhere. Sometimes, it still is. Caitlin is doing it all for Leyna. She's on Twitter--@harmonicait.  

[vinylinalphabetical-blog]

489. Aesop Rock's 'Labor Days'

2 years, 3 months, and 13 days ago, I wrote an article about seeing Aesop Rock live. It was for Potholes in my Blog, and it was partly about how I had never seen Aesop Rock live despite being obsessed with him in college, and about how he was the first rapper I loved (non-Clipse division, really) and pored over and obsessed over. It was my 4th article for Potholes, but in some ways, it was the first article I had ever really written. It was the first thing, after years as a music blogger, that felt like I really nailed. It was the first thing I had written that I felt really proud of. It was the first thing I wrote that felt good, in a way I still can't really describe.

I had just quit working as a full time blogger, where I was paid to keep the content gruel hot and heavy, I wrote everything and anything I could to get that $2 a post money and keep myself in frozen pizzas. I wrote as many as 300 posts a month. It was a soul-crushing way to live, and at the end of it, I wasn't even sure I wanted to write anymore. It didn't seem like I could write the things I wanted to or anything that would make me feel good about myself. I had written a 5 year plan for after college while in college as part of a blowoff lifeskills class, and my plan was basically 1. Work a dayjob that paid well and had benefits. 2. Freelance at a website that allowed me to write cool articles I was proud of. In 2012, 4 years out of college, I wasn't even close to that. I was working as the grocery manager of a Target store, and I was writing dumb 100 word blog posts. My personal life was an at an all time low, I drank alone, in my apartment, a lot, and generally felt bad about myself. I resolved to make a change.

Less than two weeks later, I started this Tumblr. I was able to write about whatever I wanted--my life, my records, my favorite bands. I was able to shake off the rust that comes with writing only total bullshit, and eventually started writing for Noisey, and for the local Alt Weekly, and for a bunch of places that paid on time and didn't make me write 150 words about the cover of the new Weezer album. I wrote fiction for Paste, and for Consequence of Sound. Writing for this Tumblr allowed me to crack into myself, and feel better about being a writer, ultimately. I got a dayjob with better pay and better hours and better people. I found A, and my life has basically never been more perfect. Things are going great. I haven't written anything I've been un-proud of in 2 years. 

But here's the thing: eventually, I knew that the timer would come up for this Tumblr. I only had 300 records when I started; now I'm at something closer to 500. And my big fear became that I would eventually just start reviewing my purchases from my most recent trip to the record store. And it hasn't felt like that. Until recently. I think I've reached the end of the road here. Or at least I've come close to the part where the pavement ends. So, I guess I'm announcing that once I get to entry number 500, I will no longer be writing here anymore. I started this to get to a better place, and I'm here.

I've got some special things planned for the last 10 entries though; some guest posts, some lists, some whatever I feel likes. I technically don't even have the records to get to 500 quite yet, but being that listening to this Aesop Rock record this week made me remember starting this blog and going to that concert, I figured it's time to announce my encroaching closure of this blog soon.  

[vinylinalphabetical-blog]

488. Ice Cube's 'AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted'

A confession: Until I just bought this album, I hadn't listened to AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted, I mostly only knew of it as a trivia question answer: what was the album Ice Cube made when he was unceremoniously kicked out of NWA after he fought for his fair share of NWA's royalties (he wrote a large, large percentage of the album's lyrics, writing for everyone on the record basically). I also knew that it was the reference point for Killer Mike's R.A.P. Music, an album that found an angry, polemicized rapper pairing with a producer who, stylistically at least, seems like a bad match. On this album Ice paired up with the Bomb Squad--the production team that put the Enemy in Public Enemy--and somehow sell 2.5 million copies. 

So, I guess I can say that the album totally rules? Because it does. It's great. The funniest thing about listening to this now is finding out places like Rolling Stone decried this album as "vulgar" which is LOLZ to the highest power. I'm gonna go listen to this again. 

[vinylinalphabetical-blog]

487. Jamey Johnson's 'The Guitar Song'

Sometimes records become something of a duty for you. This Jamey Johnson record sat in the underutilized used country section of my local shop for something like seven months, and every time I went, I thought about buying it, and thought "Nah, someone else wants it more than me." But everytime I went back, there it sat, untouched, still bearing it's $14.99 tag. I finally pulled the trigger and grabbed it, because it was my duty to make sure this record didn't die a slow, dust-ridden death in the basement of my local store. That these songs of old-school country verve in a new school country package, that the goofy colored vinyl treatment (LP1 is black, LP2 is black and white, LP3 is White), has a home. And that home is mine now, because I'm a person who anthropomorphizes records.  

[vinylinalphabetical-blog]

486. Eric B And Rakim's 'Paid In Full'

It's crazy, when I think about it, that for a genre that has so totally taken over the Zeitgeist, that some of the building block releases of what we consider hip-hop have come out since I was born. Paid In Full, one of the acknowledged first "classic" rap LPs came out when I was 16 months old. 

It's also crazy to consider how far and how fast the genre changed in the intervening 27 years: Paid In Full sounds like classic rock compared to something like Rich Nigga Timeline. Rakim sounds--and he basically admitted it afterwards--that he was reading raps off a sheet of paper, and that the production was made on a NES.

But still; you can hear the foundation of a whole genre, what we'd expect from a rap full-length album, how rap lyrics could cut like daggers, and the making of a legend between Eric B's breakbeats.     

[vinylinalphabetical-blog]

485. "Weird Al" Yankovic's 'Weird Al Yankovic In 3-D' (A Conversation With Known "Weird Al" Hater James Normington)

A few weeks ago, I bought the sophomore album from Weird Al, Weird Al In 3-D. I would say I'm not really a Weird Al fan, per se, but this record was too goofy to not spend the $5 on. I wasn't sure what I'd have to say about Weird Al, but I knew exactly who to call: My friend James Normington, a grad student in Minneapolis, who is a known Weird Al hater. I wanted to get to the bottom of James' hatred, and create interesting content, so we emailed back and forth yesterday. I think ultimately, it made me hate Weird Al and now I'm not sure if I want this record anymore.

Andrew: James, I am asking you to do this because 1. I want you to be involved with my Tumblr somehow because I am a professional at involving my friends in my shit and 2. Because, incredibly, you are the only person I have ever met who vehemently hates Weird Al. I know people who don't like him much--my moms for instance--but you like seriously hate him. I remember that time at karaoke those girls did his American Pie Star Wars shit, and you kept yelling to me about how Weird Al is "an unfunny piece of shit fuckboy." For the record, I think he's Important to pop culture history, but he hasn't been remotely funny since at least "Amish Paradise."

So, I guess to start, tell me why you dislike Weird Al. When did it start? What set you off on your Weird Al holocaust?

James: I appreciate this opportunity. It's always been an outsider-looking in type of hate. Honestly, I am flabbergasted at the lack of criticism he gets every time he releases a song. I'll do my best to explain. 

My first memory of Weird Al is hearing "Amish Paradise" when I was growing up. I laughed along to it, but it was more of a "HAHA I GET THIS I UNDERSTAND WHAT HE IS SAYING GUYS LOL" rather than a "Wow, this is genuinely funny." The song is much more mean than it is funny, which is a common theme in his stuff.

To best answer your question -- I went to a private high school, so most of my classmates come from a good amount of money. I was placed in an advanced math class freshman year of high school that was taught by a pretty goofy dude. One day we were kind of dickin' around and the teacher reveals he loves Weird Al and knows "White and Nerdy" by heart. He recites the whole thing and was validated with laughter by a sea of white rich dorks. It was the most under-the-rug scene of privilege, superiority, and caucasian smugness. I have a separate manifesto about the song itself, should I go into that?

Andrew: Yeah, tell me about your "White and Nerdy" manifesto. I think there is something to be said for the fact that I think Weird Al escapes a lot of the appropriation talk that comes in with like, Miley Cyrus, or whoever. No one is writing thinkpieces about how Weird Al is taking a song about the harsh realities of the Los Angeles Ghetto ("Gangsta's Paradise") and turned it into a giant joke. I also think it's impossible for him to co-opt like, Chief Keef. He knows which targets are safe, which is maybe his biggest asset as a parodist. 

James: Yeah, exactly. How does he get away with that so cleanly? I could go into the whole cultural appropriation thing but I'll leave it to the reader to just look at the lyrics. It's terrible. I'm nowhere near as hypersensitive as your Sociology 101 professor, but there is something to be said about positive stereotypes still being stereotypes. If you don't bat an eye at "White and Nerdy", don't you dare get angry about "Asian and Mathematically Gifted", "Black and Good at Basketball", "Hispanic and Romantic", or "Jewish and Thrifty". That being said, I don't hate Weird Al because I think he's racist (intentionally, at least). I hate him because he is a musical genius in the way that Buzzfeed writers are accomplished journalists -- he has a formula (and it fucking works because humanity sucks and everyone lacks critical thinking skills):

1) Take an extremely popular song. 2) Take out the original lyrics. 3) Replace the lyrics with a. universally relatable garbage ("First World Problems", "Don't Download this Song") b. new lyrics which are coherent but completely unrelated to the original lyrics (almost every other song)

Do you see why this works? The only difference between a popular song and a song by Weird Al is the lyrics, which is pretty hard to mess up with the right studio equipment.

Andrew: I mean, I feel you, but I think there's sort of a generation gap here. When Weird Al was at his big peak--say, 1991--there wasn't a million people making jokes about current songs like there is now, or least not in a public forum. He was basically the only dude out there making the "Eat It" joke. I think his schtick was originally sorta unique--and it was unreal that he became famous enough to make a movie (UHF)--but now he's too late on most of his parodies because people have already made the same joke a million times. I think I'm about the last age of person who can think that Weird Al is "Important."

I think the interesting thing about this album (Weird Al in 3-D) specifically, is how ephemeral his stuff is, and how there are only 2 songs on it that I can identify which songs its parodying. I kind of wonder where he's going to end up historically. Like, in 25 years, are kids going to listen to "Eat It" and laugh? What do you think? You can't tell me you at least don't sorta chuckle at "Eat It."

James: Yeah, I'm guessing it is a generational gap. With the advent of the technology, information is so accessi- <falls asleep for ten hours> and so basically every joke has been made or is about to be made!

On the real though, I feel you. But it's just something I can't see nor do I want to see. Weird Al Yankovic will always be a recognizable name in the realm of music, sadly. Will he be ultra-relevant like he was in the 90's? No. If the world was fair, he'd be as ephemeral as Corky and the Juice Pigs.

Also, be careful about your use of the word "parody". When you parody something, you make fun of it or AT THE VERY LEAST you reference it. Weird Al does not parody songs. He steals music.

Andrew: So your thesis is that Weird Al is as bad as Napster? You're my favorite. 

James: Larv you Andrew

James is on Twitter at @Jamesnormington. He is a better lover than he is a fighter. 

[vinylinalphabetical-blog]

484. The Whispers' 'Headlights'